


Turn Back The Wind

by AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)



Category: Hellenistic Religion & Lore, The Oresteia - Aeschylus
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is justice?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn Back The Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theviolonist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/gifts).



They say little girls fall in love with their fathers. Athena doesn't know about that.

They also say little girls grow to become their mothers. Athena doesn't know about that either. How can she? She never knew her mother—by her father's accounts she doesn't have one at all; she is his daughter entirely, he says. Hera says otherwise, naming Metis as Athena's mother; no one has seen Metis since before Athena was born, so it's difficult to ask her to settle the question.

This young man, this suppliant at Athena's shrine, hounded by the Kindly Ones—he killed his mother, the Kindly Ones say. It is Zeus whom Athena thinks of. What would impel her to kill him, or at any rate to attempt to kill him?

Not much, is the truthful answer. If someone with greater power than her own compelled her, or if he wronged her terribly—worse than the day Pallas died—

The Kindly Ones claim the young man was compelled by no one, forced by nothing, and Athena cannot deny a desire to surrender him to their... _kindly_...care. It isn't _right_ , to kill one's mother—though she does recall wishing for one of Zeus's thunderbolts to use against him, the day Pallas died.

That said. If the young man's mother _did_ do some great wrong to him, then he may have behaved justly, if not rightly, in killing her—but of course, in that scenario, she must not have behaved rightly to begin with. And if the young man _was_ forced by some stronger person to kill his mother, then the fault is not his at all, and the Kindly Ones have no just business here, even oathsworn as they are to destroy murderers.

What would her father do?

In answer to that question, and to the question of the Kindly Ones' leader, Athena says "I assert that no one should use oaths to let injustice triumph."

When the Kindly Ones agree that Athena herself is to render judgment on the young man, that they will abide by her decision about what is just, Athena turns to the young man. He names himself son of Agamemnon, and that is enough to recall the whole bloody history of his family. Orestes's only relations with unbloodied hands may be his sisters—and Electra still lives, so she might yet find herself killing Orestes to avenge Clytemnestra—and their cousin Hermione.

The surprising thing is that Orestes names Apollo as bearing responsibility as well, for inciting him to murder his mother on the grounds that no man can live under the same sky as his father's murderer. Which is true enough—justice must be done.

There's something Orestes isn't saying. Athena chooses not to worry about it: Orestes does not deny killing Clytemnestra, Electra hasn't followed him to kill him herself—sensible woman, in Athena's opinion, even though it is equally true that no woman can live under the same sky as her mother's murderer—and the only question before her is whether Orestes should be punished for Clytemnestra's murder.

To free him unpunished is to spread miasma and risk everything Athena and her family and their worshippers have worked so hard to build. To punish him for doing exactly as divine law commands...is equally to spread miasma and risk civilization.

What would her father do?

In answer to that question, and—truth be told—to delay having to answer the question of Orestes's punishment, Athena seeks out a council of honest Athenian people, twelve in number: six women and six men, in mirror of the divine council her father sometimes seeks counsel from—the Twelve Gods, excluding Zeus himself, and including Hestia, tender of the hearth, who is an Olympian by courtesy.

Athena does in fact ask her father what he would do; she asks also her stepmother, her aunts, her uncles, and her siblings (bar Apollo, because of course he is named among the accused). The opinions she receives are equally divided: Zeus and Ares would punish him, Hera and Hestia would refrain, Persephone and Hades pointedly refrain from expressing opinions since he's not dead yet, and everyone else Athena asks equivocates or temporizes. Melpomene shakes her head but takes notes on the dilemma, presumably for later artistic purposes. Artemis simply refuses to answer. "You're Wisdom's daughter, not I," she says.

Her council of twelve Athenians assembled, Athena requires them all to swear an oath that they will each be wise and just in their decision, taking into account all facts and factors brought up by both the accused and the accusers. Then she summons the court.

Apollo stands of course in Orestes's defense. Orestes admits at once to killing Clytemnestra, and says he has yet to regret it. Athena thinks that she herself, were she to be driven to kill Zeus, would regret it bitterly ever after.

She also wonders why the Kindly Ones had no interest in Clytemnestra, if it is true that she killed Agamemnon. "She and her victim shared no common blood" is a hollow defense: that is the ordinary way of things, after all, and the Kindly Ones still have their job to do.

When Apollo says on whose instructions he told Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, Athena wants to _slap_ her father. It's on Zeus's orders that Agamemnon be avenged, and yet it's Zeus's opinion that Orestes be punished for taking the vengeance that was only his just due?

Athena also wants to slap Apollo, when he brings up her own motherless state.

—Artemis said Athena is Wisdom's daughter, and many have called Zeus wise but none have called him Wisdom. That's Metis's name, as 'Hearth' is Hestia's.

What would her _mother_ do?

In answer to that question, Athena asks: What is the wise course of action here?

The one that does not spread miasma, of course—but how to accomplish that?

When Orestes and his defenders have fallen silent, Athena speaks, establishing this tribunal as a means of invoking justice for the life of the city. The whole problem with the House of Atreus (well, if one disregards the curse on Pelops son of Tantalus) is that there was no way to do justice for a wrong without in the process doing another wrong. If at _any_ point in the family's history, someone had come to _Athena_ for help—she would have asked something in return, of course, but she would have seen justice done, in a civilized manner. No more bloodshed.

That's it.

That's the answer: _no more bloodshed_. Orestes need not die to answer his mother's death, and Athena will personally stand between Electra and Orestes should Electra decide to avenge Clytemnestra. The Kindly Ones will need calming—

The Kindly Ones will need flattery, Athena suspects. But they can be persuaded, she hopes. Bribed, perhaps—it would be unjust to accept a bribe, but the Kindly Ones do sometimes behave unjustly. Orestes being the first of the House of Atreus to merit their gentle attention is proof enough of that. Anyway, no one ever promised her that life would be fair.

She declares her vote in favor of Orestes. She counts the council's ballots: her vote is the deciding one. She talks _very fast_ to the Kindly Ones.

They say little girls fall in love with their fathers. Athena doesn't know about that.

They also say little girls grow to become their mothers. If Hera and Artemis speak truly—Athena can only hope that what they say is true.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to LeaperSonata for betaing, and to Seanan McGuire for the title and a couple lines of story. I'm also borrowing two lines from Vathara.


End file.
